Abstract
This article presents an analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English, an emergent variety spoken in the Kingdom of Tonga. The normalised Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI-V) is used to classify the variety and determine the social and stylistic constraints on variation in a corpus of conversational and reading passage data with 48 speakers. Findings reveal a greater tendency towards stress-timing in speakers of the emergent local elite, characterised by white-collar professions and high levels of education, and those with a high index of English use. Variation is discussed as a consequence of proficiency, language contact and L1 transfer. An acoustic analysis of vowels in unstressed syllables of eight speakers confirms that lack of vowel centralisation (higher F1) is an underlying linguistic mechanism leading to more syllable-timed speech. Stark interspeaker variation was identified, highlighting the need to proceed with caution when classifying L2 Englishes based on speech rhythm.
Funder
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Reference80 articles.
1. Thomas, Erik & Carter, Phillip . 2003. A cross-ethnic comparison of rhythm in the American South. Paper presented at the 4th UK Language Variation and Change conference.
2. Spectrographic study of vowel reduction;Lindblom;The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,1963
3. The usefulness of metrics in the quantification of speech rhythm;Arvaniti;Journal of Phonetics,2012
4. Measuring speech rhythm